Home inspections
in Richmond, Virginia.

What inspections look like here.

Richmond is an independent city, not part of any county, and that matters less for permitting than it does for housing diversity. The Fan, Museum District, and Church Hill are dense with late-19th-century rowhouses — original heart-pine floors, slate roofs that are often a century old, and basements with stone foundations that have seen plenty of water over the years. These homes reward careful inspection. They punish a fast one.

Move out to Northside and you're looking at 1910s–1930s craftsman bungalows and four-squares. Knob-and-tube wiring is occasionally still active in concealed spaces, plaster-and-lath ceilings hide their own settling stories, and original copper or galvanized supply lines are running out their last decade. The West End — Stratford Hills, Westover Hills, Windsor Farms — runs more toward 1950s–1970s ranches and split-levels, where the questions are about original HVAC, aluminum branch wiring, and the state of crawlspace moisture.

Manchester, Scott's Addition, and Shockoe Bottom have seen heavy mill-to-loft conversion over the past fifteen years. These come with their own inspection profile: spray-applied fireproofing, exposed-beam construction, shared-wall systems, and HVAC that's been retrofitted into spaces that weren't designed for it. Adaptive-reuse projects like these often have century-old structural systems living alongside brand-new mechanicals, and how those two interact is a real part of reading the building's condition.

Downtown and the historic districts add another layer. Brick foundations and masonry walls that have stood for a century read nothing like modern poured concrete and have to be evaluated on their own terms — a degree of settlement, sloping floors, and cosmetic cracking is normal aging in a structure this old, and the job is separating that from movement that actually needs attention. Older homes also tend to carry materials that have mostly disappeared from new construction: asbestos-containing materials, lead-based paint, older insulation products. Justin notes where they're present so a buyer can plan maintenance and renovations with eyes open.

The standard process — roof walked, crawlspace entered, every system inspected by hand, same-day or next-morning report — applies citywide. The difference is what to look for. Justin's lived and worked in this market long enough to know.